About a Girl (36 page)

‘Hello,’ I replied, more than a little awkward. Al loitered a few feet away, carefully examining a knot in the wood of one of the chairs on the veranda and demonstrating very impressive not-listening skills. ‘I’ve got good news.’

‘Is that why you had to sneak off in the middle of the night?’ he asked, striding across the room and pulling a T-shirt over his bare torso. Which was a shame. ‘Clearly it wasn’t because you were self-conscious about your hair looking a mess.’

Ouch. He really was annoyed. I raised a sad hand halfway up to my sad hair before shaking my head and reminding myself why I was there. Not to bicker and argue but to make something right. For a change.

‘Clearly not,’ I agreed. I took a cautious step into his cottage and waited to see what he would do. Nothing. ‘I went for a walk.’

‘Well, that makes much more sense,’ he replied. ‘Totally understandable.’

‘Hang on a minute, you weren’t around when I woke up yesterday. I thought you didn’t do sleepovers?’ I planted my hands on my hips. I’d come to make things better, not get into a fight, but it didn’t look like he was going to give me any choice.

He opened the fridge door, pulled out a carton of orange juice and gulped it loudly for an uncomfortably long time. I noticed his juice had pulp; mine did not. Kekipi must be some sort of idiot savant when it came to juice preferences.

‘Nick, you can kick my arse in a bit, but right now I need you to get your bloody Dictaphone and your pen and your little pad and come outside. I’ve got someone who wants to talk to you.’

‘I don’t have a little pad,’ he snapped back. But journalistic curiosity was too much for him and he turned around slowly. ‘Who am I supposed to be talking to?’

‘It’s good.’ I bit my bottom lip to keep in a smile. According to the thunderous expression on his face, it was still too soon for smiling. ‘It’s really good.’

He placed the empty juice carton on the side, brushed his hair away from his face and gave me a disbelieving look.

‘Oh, just come with me.’ I grabbed his arm and dragged him back towards the open door. ‘My friend Bertie Bennett would like to have a little chat with you and then we’re going to take some pictures. Does that sound OK?’

‘But how …’ Nick’s eyes lit up and a huge smile broke out across his face. In an instant he’d become someone else, switching from mean and moody to eager and excitable. And as much as mean and moody Nick made my knickers twitch, eager and excitable Nick did something incredibly worrying to my heart.

‘Actually, fuck it, don’t tell me. Where is he?’

‘Outside.’ I moved a step to the left so he could see Off-Duty Santa, who was now whispering to himself while he picked at something I couldn’t see on the top of one of the tables with his thumbnail. I hoped Kekipi wasn’t in trouble. ‘Ta-da.’

‘That’s Bertie Bennett?’ Nick mouthed in surprise. ‘Seriously?’

‘Well, that or he’s some delusional old mental I met on the beach who is pretending to be Bertie Bennett.’ I started to laugh and then stopped. Nick met my terrified expression with one of his own. ‘Oh shit.’

‘No, no.’ He reached a hand out to my shoulder and squeezed gently. ‘I’m sure he’s not some random crazy. And even if he is, I’m pretty certain he’d give me a better interview than Artie.’

‘This is true.’ I breathed out and placed my hand on top of his. Nick smiled. I smiled. It was a little bit nauseating. I liked it. ‘God help me with the pictures, though.’

‘I might stick around while you do those.’ He nodded, laughed and leaned in to kiss me softly on the lips. ‘Thank you, Vanessa.’

And just like that, the spell was broken. I shrugged off his hand, sighed softly and ignored the confused look on his face. What else could I do?

‘You’re welcome,’ I said on my way out of the door. ‘Now come and meet my friend, Al.’

But it seemed as though our interviewee was legit. When our little party arrived at the main house, the woman dusting the pinball machine almost had a heart attack. Within seconds, every pair of eyes inside the four walls had snuck a look at us. Only Kekipi had yet to make an appearance and I had a feeling he wouldn’t be far away. Al popped a disembodied head out from inside a rainbow of dresses and smiled.

‘So how did you get into fashion in the first place?’ Nick asked while Al rummaged through a walk-in wardrobe so big I could have lived in it. And in twenty-four hours, I might have to, I thought quietly in my corner.

‘Women,’ he said, tipping Nick the wink. ‘My dad ran a gentlemen’s outfitters in Leicester, and I used to work there every Saturday. I’d see the wives come in with their husbands and then I’d have to take the chaps into the changing room and measure them up while the ladies sat outside waiting. I was about fourteen when I realized my father had it all wrong. When I took over the buying, I convinced him that we should start carrying women’s fashions. I found the more I knew about the clothes, the more I had to talk to the female customers about, and the more you talk to women, the better your odds are. Am I right, Nicholas?’

‘You are right, Mr Bennett,’ he replied with a smile.

We had locked ourselves in Jane Bennett’s dressing room and it was epic. The walls were lined with mirrors, and against one, there was a white leather fainting couch that held the dresses Al had already pulled out, and in the corner, Nick made himself at home in a chair sitting in front a vanity unit so incredibly pink, Barbie herself would have turned her nose up at it on grounds of stereotyping. He was such a picture of uncomfortable masculinity, I had to snap a photo. His khaki cargo shorts and loose white T-shirt clashed against the prettiness of it all. He looked huge and awkward and out of place. I was worried he would break something just by existing.

‘It’s Al, really. Mr Bennett is my son.’ He stretched an arm into the far reaches of the wardrobe and, with a strained expression, pulled out a huge clothing bag with a flourish. ‘Vanessa, could you take this?’

I took it, I unzipped it and I gasped at the most beautiful ballgown I had ever seen.

‘Archive Valentino,’ Al explained as I held the hanger over my head and made the dress dance. It couldn’t have been more different from the last Valentino dress I’d seen. Acres of lipstick-red silk and ruffles flurried around me and whispered just how much better my life would be if I owned something so very beautiful. ‘One of Jane’s favourites.’

‘Jane Bennett, like in Austen.’ Nick smiled at me. Of course Nick read Jane Austen. Obviously I didn’t read Jane Austen, but unfortunately for him, Jane Bennett was a character in the mini-series that had Colin Firth coming out of the pond all piss-wet-through and gorgeous, so he could piss off if he thought he was going to make me look stupid.

‘It was her favourite,’ Al nodded. ‘Always said I was her Mr Darcy. Tall, dark and bloody annoying.’

‘How did you two meet?’ Nick asked while I mooned over the love story and the Valentino.

‘Like I said, it’s a numbers game.’ He gave us both a sad smile and disappeared back into the racks while I carried on staring. ‘Sometimes your lucky number comes up. Jane came into the shop one Saturday morning in May with her fiancé. They were looking for a suit for their wedding.’

‘Al,’ I admonished, tearing my eyes away from the World’s Most Beautiful Dress. ‘You didn’t?’

Nick gave me sharp look and pressed his finger to his lips. Oh, right. I was supposed to be a silent observer of the interview. Some hope of that.

‘Vanessa, I did.’ He waggled his white eyebrows up and down. ‘She was the one. I knew it as soon as I saw her, all tall and beautiful with that bright red hair and such a furious look on her face. All I wanted to do was make her smile. And I’ll have you know, I was so good at my job, her ex didn’t even return the suit when she called off the wedding.’

‘And when did you make the move to New York?’ Nick was tapping away at his laptop while Al continued to toss bag after bag of beauty at me. I glanced over at my phone to see if Paige had returned any of my calls, but there was nothing. I’d knocked for her on the way up to the main house, but a large sheet of white paper torn out of a notebook and taped to the front door declared she was ‘SHOPPING’ in large, back scrawl. Shopping and not checking her phone, clearly. I hoped her phone call with the magazine hadn’t gone badly.

‘Jane wanted to get away after the scandal.’ Even now, Al clearly couldn’t contain his delight at winning his wife. The tiny, ebbing glow of romance left in me thought it was sweet, but the cynical, weary London woman wanted to roll my eyes and declare him a typical man. ‘And she had some family over in America. Her mother was Irish and they’d come over in the twenties. We came, we set up a little shop, and, well, that was it, really.’

‘I’m not sure anyone is going to let me let you get away with calling Bennett’s a “little shop”,’ Nick said, scratching his head with a grin. ‘I’ve been to Bennett’s. Bennett’s is a behemoth.’

‘It is now,’ Al agreed. ‘But when we moved to New York, it was a little shop. Just one floor, just three racks. Still on Madison, but Madison and 83rd. About twenty blocks away from where it is now.’

‘And what was the secret to your success? Couldn’t just be luck.’ Nick gave a non-commital shrug when Al held up a deep teal evening gown that rustled when he flicked his wrist. Al silently shook his head and put it back in the racks. I pouted.

‘No secret,’ he said, brandishing a black garment bag and throwing it directly at me. ‘It was Jane. She loved fashion and I loved her. That really was all there was to it.’

‘She must have had quite the eye.’ Nick watched as I pulled down the zip on the most glorious little black dress with a full silk skirt and acres and acres of netting underneath. ‘These are all hers?’

‘Dior,’ he said with a happy sigh. ‘And yes. She did. And they are. But she didn’t like the limelight or the drama of the fashion world, so I did all the outside business while she picked all the clothes. After a while, her taste started to rub off on me, thankfully. After she had Artie, she wasn’t nearly as interested in the store any more. She still loved clothes, though. She always looked stunning, did my Janey.’

I swallowed a lump while Nick cleared his throat in a very manly fashion and sat up in his chair. His pink padded gilt chair that was sitting at a pink padded gilt dressing table. It really was an adorable scene.

‘That’s what so many people get wrong about fashion now.’ Al clucked and passed me one more bag. I pressed it against my chest and waited for him to finish speaking. ‘It shouldn’t be about the trends or the size zeros or who’s using fur and who isn’t; it should be about love. It should be about a woman walking into a shop, seeing a dress and her face lighting up, just like yours, Vanessa. And as the buyer or the designer or even the shop assistant, you’ve got to know that. If you don’t love what you do, love seeing that look on a woman’s face when you’ve found her the perfect frock or her dream pair of shoes, then you’re in the wrong business. It shouldn’t be a popularity contest. It’s about love.’

At Al’s encouraging, I unzipped the final bag and gasped. Somewhere deep inside me, the dying romantic stuck herself with a shot of adrenaline, knocked back a Red Bull and punched the cynical London bitch in the face.

‘Oh, Albert Bennett,’ I gasped. ‘We can’t use this in the shoot.’

‘Yes, we can,’ Al said, overruling me and reaching across Nick’s crossed legs to pick up a silver frame from the crowded dressing table. Amongst the matching trinket boxes and hairbrushes that sparkled in the sunlight as though they had been polished that very morning (and I was almost certain they had) was a wedding photo. Smiling as if he had just found out that his football team were guaranteed to win the FA cup every year for the next century, a beardless and considerably younger Al stood beaming beside a tall, beautiful redhead who was wearing a distinct look of happy resignation on her face, as well as the most gorgeous dress I had ever laid eyes on. It was the dress I had in my hands. ‘It’s my article and I get to pick the dresses. Every single gown I chose after the wedding was influenced by this one. We have to include it.’

The dress was a masterpiece in simplicity. Holding it up by the hanger, it didn’t look like much. Off-white, heavy but simple. A straight neckline ended in cap sleeves and the full skirt emphasized a waist so tiny, my still empty stomach started to eat itself. All wrapped up in itself, it was only half possible to see how wonderful the dress might look on the right woman, but in the photograph Al held so carefully, it was clear that the right woman made the dress look spectacular. The black Dior sobbed quietly in the corner.

‘It’s Givenchy couture,’ Al intoned with appropriate reverence. Even Nick was holding his breath. ‘Elizabeth Taylor wanted it, but I said no. Audrey Hepburn wore a knock-off in
Funny Face
.’

‘Audrey Hepburn wore a knock-off?’ I squeaked, suddenly shaking as I realized that this dress was probably worth more than my life.

‘Not a knock off per se.’ He waved one hand in the air and brushed his thumb along the glass of the silver frame unconsciously. ‘Hers was Givenchy too. But tea length instead of a full ballgown. And she didn’t have quite so much of an underskirt. My Janey was taller; pulled it off better, if I do say so myself.’

For a moment, there was nothing more to say. I pulled the zip back up on the garment bag and gave it a hug. Mostly because I wanted one.

‘I’m going to go and get Martha.’ I hung the dress on the to-shoot rack we’d set up by the door and gave myself a shake. ‘I’ll be back in about half an hour with my camera.’

‘We’ll be here,’ Al said with a cheerful smile.

‘Can’t wait to see what you’re going to pull out your arse,’ Nick said with a sarcastic smirk.

‘If you get your head out of yours, you’ll be able to see,’ I said, skipping off down the hallway of the Bennett mansion before he could reply.

That man.

‘Martha,’ I called quietly, knocking as loudly as I dared on her front door. While I wanted my favourite model to come and help out with the reshoot, I did not want to deal with Ana. It was after ten in the morning but her curtains were still shut, and I was hoping she was a heavy sleeper. It was beyond me how anyone could sleep through a day in Hawaii, but I supposed she was used to visiting exotic locales on other people’s money. And also, it was worth remembering she was a complete bastard. ‘Martha, it’s Vanessa. Are you awake?’